'The Heat' success may bring more female comedies

Sandra Bullock (left) and Melissa McCarthy play detectives who clash in the buddy picture "The Heat."

Sandra Bullock (left) and Melissa McCarthy play detectives who...

When director Paul Feig first read "The Heat" script, Sandra Bullock already wanted to play the buddy comedy's uptight detective who's forced team up with a loose cannon partner. Who should portray the wild card? Feig immediately pictured Melissa McCarthy in the role.

"I thought, 'Oh, my God, this is a chance to take Melissa McCarthy to the next level,' " Feig says. "She can be super physical, shoot guys and fall over fences, but do it in a very real way that feels true to the character."

Trained at Los Angeles' improvisational troupe the Groundlings, McCarthy got her big Oscar-nominated break when she played a raunchy sidekick in the Feig-directed "Bridesmaids." Bullock never studied improv but adapted to Feig's free-wheeling approach by coming up with her own choreography for a set piece that he refers to as "the drunk dance."

"That wasn't in the script, but I was just obsessed, like: 'I want you guys to drunk dance.' My first idea was that Sandra in high school had been a cheerleader or something, so she'd teach a dance to Melissa's character. Since we'd used a choreographer earlier for a nightclub scene, I told Sandra and Melissa that I could get him, but they were like, 'We don't want to learn anything. We want it to be like we're making this up as we go along.' Sandra started teaching Melissa on camera, and it turned out exactly as it would happen if you were drunk in a bar. That's what I love about it."

In the wake of the worldwide box office success of "Bridesmaids," Feig hopes "The Heat" does big business and persuades studios to finance more female-driven comedies.

"I want to break that model that says, 'International audiences won't go see women,' because they do respond to Sandra. So my thought is, let's get Melissa onto that list, and then slowly bring other people onto that list."

" 'The Heat' is not a chick flick, and it's not a guy movie," he says. "It's about funny people who happen to be women. That shouldn't keep anybody from enjoying it."

Documentary features disco as empowering

"The Secret Disco Revolution" catches up with Gloria "I Will Survive" Gaynor, the Village People, Kool & the Gang and other luminaries of '70s dance music.

Inspired by Peter Shapiro's book "Turn the Beat Around: The Secret History of Disco," filmmaker Jamie Kastner considers the notion that disco played a profound sociopolitical role by empowering gays, blacks and women.

"Many people see the disco era as this underground dance and cultural movement that grew into a $4 billion industry, then flamed out," he says. "But was it a revolution? Right or wrong, it's intriguing and funny to think of a revolution so secret that the participants themselves are unaware of it."

Sam Pollard to discuss film editing in Berkeley

Although Sam Pollard edited a number of Spike Lee feature films and several of the director's documentaries over the past 25 years, he's not particularly chummy with the edgy Brooklyn filmmaker.

"Spike and I don't hang out," says Pollard, who will discuss his craft Thursday and Saturday in Berkeley as part of the Pacific Film Archive's "Behind the Scenes" series. "We're not friends, but we're very good collaborators. When you work with someone a long time, it becomes a little bit like osmosis."

Pollard cut five scripted Lee features, including "Clockers" and "Bamboozled," but he especially savors non-fiction narrative.

"For me," Pollard says, "editing documentaries is the most invigorating part of the filmmaking process. I have no script, I have no actors. In collaboration with the director or the producers, I have to figure out the story arc."

For the recent "Venus and Serena" documentary from directors Maiken Baird and Michelle Major, Pollard spent 10 months paring 450 hours of footage down to a 99-minute final cut.

"I had to make selects and build sequences, go back, reorder, resequence, show it to filmmakers, break it down again," he says. "That's the challenge: You plow through all this material trying to find the nuggets that will bring out the characters, engage your audience and tell your story." {sbox}